Raminder Singh

Apache airavata: a framework for distributed applications and computational workflows

In this paper, we introduce Apache Airavata, a software framework to compose, manage, execute, and monitor distributed applications and workflows on computational resources ranging from local resources to computational grids and clouds. Airavata builds on general concepts of service-oriented computing, distributed messaging, and workflow composition and orchestration. This paper discusses the architecture of Airavata and its modules, and illustrates how the software can be used as individual components or as an integrated solution to build science gateways or general-purpose distributed application and workflow management systems.

Twitter bootstrap and AngularJS: Frontend frameworks to expedite science gateway development

Science gateways provide user-centric views to cyberinfrastructure resources, simplifying usage and enabling a richer user experience. To enable the goals of a science gateway and the communities of scientists it supports, gateway developers need to be able to spend more time on designing and developing the user experience and less time on wrestling with the underlying technology (such as HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript). In this poster, we describe our experiences using Twitter Bootstrap and AngularJS frameworks to address this balance between design and implementation, empowering developers to create better styled and easily maintainable websites.

The GenApp framework integrated with Airavata for managed compute resource submissions

A new framework (GenApp) for rapid generation of scientific applications running on a variety of systems including science gateways has recently been developed. This framework currently builds a GUI and/or web‐based user interface for a variety of target environments on a collection of executable modules. The method for execution of modules has limited framework restrictions: primarily the requirement of wrapping the application to accept input and output formatted in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). Initial implementation supports direct execution on a users workstation, a web server, or a compute resource accessible from the web server. After a successful initial workshop utilizing the framework to create a web‐based user interface wrapping a scientific software suite, it was discovered that long‐running jobs would sometimes fail, because of the loss of a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection. This precipitated an improvement to the execution method with the bonus of easily allowing multiple web clients to attach to the running job. To support a diversity of queue managed compute resources, a Google ‘Summer of Code’ project was completed to integrate the Apache Airavata middleware as an additional execution model within the GenApp framework. New features of file management, job management with progress, and message box support are described. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 2015.© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Advancements of the UltraScan scientific gateway for open standards-based cyberinfrastructures

The UltraScan data analysis application is a software package that is able to take advantage of computational resources in order to support the interpretation of analytical ultracentrifugation experiments. Since 2006, the UltraScan scientific gateway has been used with Web browsers in TeraGrid by scientists studying the solution properties of biological and synthetic molecules. UltraScan supports its users with a scientific gateway in order to leverage the power of supercomputing. In this contribution, we will focus on several advancements of the UltraScan scientific gateway architecture with a standardized job management while retaining its lightweight design and end user interaction experience. This paper also presents insights into a production deployment of UltraScan in Europe. The approach is based on open standards with respect to job management and submissions to the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment in the USA and to similar infrastructures in Europe such as the European Grid Infrastructure or the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE). Our implementation takes advantage of the Apache Airavata framework for scientific gateways that lays the foundation for easy integration into several other scientific gateways. Copyright

GSoC 2015 student contributions to GenApp and Airavata

GenApp generates applications on an extensible set of target languages for scientific modules. GenApp utilizes JavaScript object notation (JSON) format for all definition files. To create an application, definition files are created for global directives, menu, and modules. Target languages have definition files detailing the steps‐mapping code fragments to output. Modules must be wrapped to accept and produce JSON as defined in the modules definition file. Execution models are not defined by GenApp; they are included in target language code fragments. Previously, GenApp included target languages of HTML5/PHP, Qt3/C++, and Qt4/C++ with execution models of direct local execution, a web server, or a web server accessible resource. A Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2014 student demonstrated Airavata‐managed execution in GenApps current target languages. Subsequently, Airavatas API and GenApp have evolved. Two GSoC‐2015 students updated the previous Airavata integration to support the current API and extend target languages to include Qt5/C++, Qt5/Android, and Java. GenApp was initially developed to wrap modules utilized in the small angles scattering field but is not restricted to this discipline. The GenApp philosophy is to minimize effort of the researcher to deploy modules and insure preservation in an evolving software landscape. Generated applications are in production and used by small angle scattering researchers. Copyright

Improvements of the UltraScan scientific gateway to enable computational jobs on large-scale and open-standards based cyberinfrastructures

The UltraScan data analysis application is a software package that is able to take advantage of computational resources in order to support the interpretation of analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC) experiments. Since 2006, the UltraScan scientific gateway has been used with ordinary Web browsers in TeraGrid by scientists studying the solution properties of biological and synthetic molecules. Unlike other applications, UltraScan is implemented on a gateway architecture and leverages the power of supercomputing to extract very high resolution information from the experimental data. In this contribution, we will focus on several improvements of the UltraScan scientific gateway that enable a standardized job submission and management to computational resources while retaining its lightweight design in order to not disturb the established workflows of its end-users. This paper further presents a walkthrough of the architectural design including one real installation deployment of UltraScan in Europe. The aim is to provide evidence for the added value of open standards and resulting interoperability enabling not only UltraScan application submissions to resources offered in the US cyber infrastructure Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), but also submissions to similar infrastructures in Europe and around the world. The use of the Apache Airavata framework for scientific gateways within our approach bears the potential to have an impact on several other scientific gateways too.

Rationalizing police patrol beats using Voronoi Tessellations

Computational criminology is an emerging interdisciplinary field that applies computer science and mathematical methods to the study of criminological problems. In order to understand the nature of crime one has to comprehend not only its spatio-temporal dimensions, but also the victim-offender relationship, role of guardians and history of similar incidents. In this position paper we explore a problem in rationalizing police patrolling beats using Voronoi Tessellations which provide a powerful technique to explore variety of criminological perspectives and understand the geography of crime and its control mechanism. The paper presents a method to rationally design an equitable workload amongst the police patrol beats in order to better handle the challenge of crime.

GenApp module execution and airavata integration

A new framework (GenApp) for rapid generation of scientific applications running on a variety of systems including science gateways has recently been developed. This framework builds a user interface for a variety of target environments on a collection of executable modules. The method for execution of the modules is unrestricted by the framework. Initial implementation supports direct execution, and not queue managed submission, on a users workstation, a web server, or a compute resource accessible from the web server. After a successful workshop, it was discovered that long running jobs would sometimes fail, due to the loss of a TCP connection. This precipitated an improvement to the execution method with the bonus of easily allowing multiple web clients to attach to the running job. Finally, to support a diversity of queue managed compute resources, a Google Summer of Code project was completed to integrate the Apache Airavata middleware as an additional execution model within the GenApp framework.

Utilizing a social networking site as a web portal to process CReSIS radar data

Scientists have shown that declines in the mass of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will lead to sea level rise affecting large areas of coastlines. Data is being collected by researchers regarding the mass of the ice creating large amounts of data which can be overwhelming to undergraduate and K-12 researchers. Visualization can lead to a better understanding of this data and guide students to involvement in polar research. The goal of this project was the implementation of code to provide an interactive display of ice depth data from Greenland expeditions. The project required the cooperation of the CReSIS and PolarGrid partnerships. The implementation involved the use of a social networking site as a gateway to ice depth data. This project is the basis of a cyberinfrastructure gateway to be implemented at ECSU using an intermediary shared services approach versus the previous generation of component based portals.